What I know about FGM.
Haven’t heard anyone talking about it.(loads on Twitter and telly news last year)
Never heard a man talking about it. (seen male telly interviewer)
have to know to whom I’m talking because it’s a shocking thing when you first get it to your ears
In the seventies some called it clitoridectomy
some called it circumcision
most never say any of those words
Anthropologists said it was to do with cleansing a female of man’s parts (The clitoris being a female penis) and the circumcisors of boys said, well, anthropologists said that there was the cutting away of a man’s female bits (The penis has a clitoral hood).
Then as women got to know about themselves post 1960s /post Kinsey we heard well a few of us heard that the removal of the clitoris was to curb women’s sexual desires and keep them sexless as it became known that vaginal orgasms equated clitoral orgasms and women could “do it for themselves” i e be orgasmic.
That mothers drag their daughters to the cutting post
That in UK now girls are being cut at age 5-8 years ILLEGALLY.
That hags use razors to cut flesh and that the pain is unimaginable
That that must be the point when girls hate their mothers and find no allies.
That FGM is abuse and is dictated by elders.
That communities which practise FGM (illegally) make women subservient then celebrate.
That when I cried at the photo of a girl being dragged to her cut another woman said to me, “She will grow up then get her own daughter cut.”
That Enfield that previously white bastion of English suburbia has a problem and like many places is slowly like a snail reacting. It takes ages to teach people the language of FGM as many many people cannot voice the words labia and clitoris. I know of not one person who says those words.
That there is trauma affecting a whole population of young girls who will carry mental distress with them for life unless they get counselling and recognition of being part of the 50% of humans sharing our planet.
This is not an African problem or a cultural norm at all. This is abuse of babies and women and is worldwide.
A guy went to prison in Canada for mutilating his own daughter (she’s just a girl remember) and came out two years ago. The child will never get her flesh back will she?
And on and on. This is not a sisters unite thing. This is a world health priority and one for the courts.
What I know…and the rest.
